Sunday, October 28, 2012

Max Scherzer in the World Series

Q. The weather is obviously something you can't control, but when it's this cold, how do you change what you wear or what you do or anything like that?

MAX SCHERZER: Yeah, I haven't worn sleeves the whole year fortunately but that's going to change. I'm going back to all the tricks I did in college, numerous 40‑degree games there. It'll be just a challenge just like what everybody has to do to battle this cold weather.

Q. Tricks like that?

MAX SCHERZER: Wearing shorts underneath your pants, finding the right long sleeves, warming up extra long, anything you can do to keep your body warm.

When Max Scherzer and Matt Cain take the mound tonight for their teams in Game 4, it could be the best pitching matchup of the World Series. Scherzer would be the ace on many teams. Cain is the ace for the Giants.

You can talk about the pressure all you want. You can wonder how Max Scherzer will handle his emotions Sunday night when he makes his World Series debut, starting Game 4 with the Tigers suddenly — stunningly — facing elimination against the San Francisco Giants.

But you should know that Scherzer, the Tigers' hard-throwing right-hander, has dealt with a situation far more trying than this on the mound.

Back on June 23, he allowed three runs on three hits and a walk in six innings against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Yet the strength of that start certainly wasn't measured in the numbers. Scherzer fought through unimaginable grief that afternoon at PNC Park, just two days after the death of his younger brother, Alex.

"He did something that I couldn't have done," said Jeff Jones, the Tigers' pitching coach. "To have that happen and then come back a couple days later and pitch, I really don't know how he managed."

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